It's a disappointment thousands of music and sporting fans will have faced: you're ready with credit card in hand the minute tickets go on sale for a gig or match, but no sooner do they go on sale than they sell out.

Then minutes later you spot tickets on reselling websites.

Today experts revealed the new hidden threat that is snatching tickets from under the noses of genuine fans: ticketing bots.

Sell out show: True fans are having stumping up well above the face value of tickets to see their favourite bands or teams

Music and sports fans have always battled against touts buying up tickets to make a quick buck by selling them on again at inflated prices. But now touts have a new cyber weapon that allows them to step up their game.

Now experts, backed by members of the House of Lords, say there are simple measures that could be taken by 'secondary' ticketing websites - online marketplaces where sellers can set their own price for tickets - that would stop the bots.

However, the changes are being fought by the leading secondary ticket sellers, including Viagogo, Stubhub and GET ME IN!.

What are ticketing bots?

Ticketing bots are software that buy up huge numbers of tickets for events as soon as they go on sale. Buyers then use secondary ticketing websites to sell them on.

Reg Walker, Britain's leading ticket-fraud expert, explains that 'botnets' are computer programmes pre-loaded with different names, addresses and credit card details, which are used to target ticketing agents.

'They then harvest tickets at high speed and that effectively blocks out genuine fans from being able to purchase tickets at face value,' he claims. 'These tickets are then immediately resold on secondary ticketing platforms.'

He adds: 'I've seen one case where three pairs of tickets were bought in the same minute from three different addresses using the same credit card details. This was at a time when there were 80,000 people on the website trying to buy tickets for the same event.'

The bots are for sale online for a few hundred pounds. 'You just buy a bot and off you go,' says Mr Walker.

How big a problem are bots?

The problem is there is little or no transparency around ticket touting, so it is almost impossible to say.

Reg Walker, who has been investigating ticket fraud for 16 years, said he investigated 120,000 ticket sales for high-demand events this year. Of these, he claims more than 30 per cent went to touts who are selling them on secondary sites.

Leading secondary ticket site Viagogo claims this number is too high and the actual figure is much, much smaller.

Sharon Hodgson MP, Co-Chair of the All-Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse, says: 'This is precisely the problem. There is so little transparency it is impossible to be sure of the scale of the problem. If we could see who was selling large numbers of tickets, we’d have a greater chance of finding the people using the bots.'

What is being done about them?

Ticketing websites say they are doing everything they can to beat the scourge of ticketing bots.

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster says it invests significantly in its technology to differentiate the real fans from the bots.

'The work that we do is successful as we continue to fend off millions of bot attacks each year. We have a series of automatic checks that are in place, including Captcha and IP address monitoring, as well as a team who manually checks all orders for any suspicious activity.'

Block booking: Touts using ticketing bots to snatch several tickets all at one go

It adds that all websites have to fight bots 'from Google to Twitter and Facebook to much smaller ecommerce sites'.

So why haven't they been stopped?

Sharon Hodgson believes the use of ticketing bots is so lucrative that it's almost impossible to stop. 'It's turned into an arms race,' she says. 'You can introduce new security protocols, but it won’t be long until someone will have found a way around it.'

She claims that while touts are able to make thousands of pounds buying and selling tickets for profit, they will find a way to do it.

Some believe secondary ticketing sites could also be doing more to crack down on ticketing bots and touts.

They claim that while it is still possible for touts to sell on tickets to secondary sites, they will find a way to do it.

Reg Walker claims that it is not in the interests of secondary ticketing websites to crack down on touts – after all they benefit from the resale of tickets.

'The secondary websites know exactly who has huge numbers of tickets, but apparently refuse to ask questions about their provenance,' a parliamentary source adds. 'They are in effect aiding and abetting people who use bots. They could be doing a lot more.'

However secondary ticketing sites claim that it is up to ticket sellers to regulate whom they sell their tickets to, not up to secondary sites

Crackdown: Sharon Hodgson MP is part of a group that is pushing for legislation that would tackle bots

A spokesperson for Viagogo says: 'All questions regarding botnets should be directed to the organisations selling the tickets in the first place, as only they know who they are selling their tickets to.'

How can we stop the bots?

Politicians are also stepping up the fight against ticket touting, with proposals for new legislation that would make it much harder for touts to use bots.

Last month a cross-party group of Peers passed an amendment to the incoming Consumer Rights Bill to increased transparency in the ticket reselling market.

If passed by the House of Commons next month,anyone selling tickets through major internet platforms like Seatwave or Viagogo would have to prominently disclose key facts to potential customers, including:

Their identity, particularly where they are selling tickets as a business

The original face value of the tickets being sold

Details about the tickets sold, such as the seat number or booking reference

Whether the terms and conditions on the ticket mean that it can be cancelled if the organisers find out it has been resold.

The group of Peers believe that if people who sell on tickets are obliged to reveal their identity, touts wouldn't be able to hide and genuine fans would no longer lose out to professionals buying up tickets in bulk and selling them on for profit.

However ticketing and secondary ticketing websites are fighting the proposals. They claim that if details of the tickets and sellers were revealed, the event organisers could cancel tickets if they were not happy for them to be resold, leaving genuine fans out of pocket.

Some also claim that if sellers were forced to share this information it would threaten identity security and increase the risk of fraud.

Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, chief executive of StubHub International, says: 'As a trusted player in this market, we fully support consumer protection but this amendment is not about transparency. Including more seller details will instead be used by certain event organisers who are against enabling ticket resale to cancel tickets which have been resold legally - where is the fairness in that?'

Oliver Wheeler, global head of communications at Viagogo, adds that it is in favour of making information clearer on its website and is constantly looking at ways to do so.

'However, publishing the original seller's identity is unnecessary because all tickets come with the viagogo guarantee, while publishing specific seat numbers allows rights owners to cancel tickets which are being legitimately resold,' he says. 'Anyone can see that is not in the consumer's best interests.'

Meanwhile a spokesperson for Ticketmaster, which also operates a resale exchange, GET ME IN!, says: 'This amendment ignores the wishes of fans and it is unworkable, unnecessary and would reduce rather than improve levels of consumer protection in the market.'

He added that the proposed amendment does nothing to address the use of bots and that the UK already has tough consumer protection laws that cover all marketplaces and criminal law to cover fraud in the ticketing market.

But a parliamentary source claims event organisers have no interest in cracking down on music or sports fans who resell the odd ticket they find they can no longer use. Instead they want to crack down on touts who buy up hundreds of tickets and sell them on.

Changing times: While once ticket touts largely operated outside venues, now many have moved online as well

Wouldn't it be easier if you could just sell unwanted tickets back to the venue?

Some venues will take back unsold tickets if they are able to sell them on again before the event. In this way, no one profits from the reselling of tickets – they are merely redistributed from someone unable to attend to someone else who would like to.

However, it is feared that this practice on a wide scale could actually help touts.

'Offering refunds would help out genuine fans who don’t want to resell tickets they can’t use, and lots of event-holders do give refunds,' says Hodson.

'However, the reason many don’t is because it could actually encourage touting, Touts would know that they could buy up as many tickets as they like, try their luck getting higher prices, and then cash in any they couldn’t re-sell and get their money back; it completely removes the risk from what they do.'

Are bots the reason tickets seem to appear on secondary ticketing websites the moment an event sells out?

Secondary ticketing sites say there is no connection. One said only a very small proportion of tickets sold through touts end up on secondary ticketing websites, they say. The vast majority are from corporate tickets that are unwanted, tickets given to fan clubs that they decide to sell on or from sponsors.

However what is clear is while reselling tickets online remains an anonymous business, there is no way of knowing whether or not touts are flogging tickets to secondary websites.